As school wrapped up for Christmas vacation, Sara spent a morning lesson planning for the first week of January. Her class was down the hall in the gym, practicing their Christmas pageant song and dance. She had decided to take advantage of some peace and quiet. They would be starting a new story in the reading anthology after break and when she flipped ahead, she saw the story's title: Snow Day. The vocabulary words included drift, plow, frost and snow angel. Her classful of 7 year olds from South Central Los Angeles would have little, if any, experience with anything having to do with snow. Sara would try to dig through photo albums over Christmas break and look for pictures to illustrate these otherwise abstaract concepts.
On Christmas morning, Sara woke up to the familiar scraping in her driveway. Out her window, she saw that the world had been blanketed in a thick coat of white. Grabbing her camera, she ran outside to catch the plow in action. Later that day, Sara cajoled her grumpy brother into making snow angels and snapped a snowblower in action. She captured the snow piled up higher than the bumper of her family van and made her brother stand waist deep in a drift.
Back in California, Sara sat cross-legged on the floor in a circle of 8 students.
"How many of you know what a snow day is?"
No response.
"Have any of you ever seen snow?"
Wendy raised her hand slowly.
"My mama took us to Big Bear Mountain. We made snowballs."
"How deep was the snow? How much was on the ground?"
Wendy thought for a moment, "We could still see some of the grass under the snow."
"Can you imagine having so much snow that they cancel school?"
Wendy shook her head, eyes wide. The rest of the group laughed.
Sara pulled out the picturesfrom Christmas morning and passed them around the circle. She explained how snow plows cleared the streets and how people used snow blowers and shovels to clear sidewalks and driveways. She told them about 5:30 AM phone calls that meant you could sleep until 9 and then spend the whole day playing in the snow and drinking hot chocolate. Sara had also brought a few pictures of herself at 6 or 7 years old, playing in a snowfilled yard and sledding down the hill in front of the high school. Her kids squealed with delight--the thought that Sara had ever been a little kid was hilarious to them.
After a few snowy stories about life in New Jersey, Sara reviewed the target vocabulary, making each student point out the term in one of her pictures. When she felt confident that the words had become concrete objects, they opened their textbooks and began to read.
4 comments:
Oh, I love this!!! So well written! I had some of that happen to me when I moved from VT to PA. People asked me if I had ever been swimming ... When we read Jack London, the teacher asked us to raise our hands if we had been in 0 degree weather, then 10 below. No one but me was left at 10. She said, "How cold was the coldest you experienced." I said, "Twenty below." She asked what I was doing ... skiing, snowshoeing, ice skating? I answered, "Waiting for the bus." :) My step sister is from FL and she and her kids were so excited in VT a few weeks ago when they visited and it snowed -- so fun to see the kids with their tongues out. I love the line about the familiar scrape in the driveway and all about snow days. Ahh, winter living!
chris, i'm late in reading posts. i will soon. but i would like to ask you to consider moving to blogworld road. you can get info at ces' blog. she is someone i recommend you check out anyway. she and a writer named caroline have both posted blogs that show who is moving to the neighborhood. you can have any house you want.
:)
M--thanks! This one was fun to write. All this global warming crap is a little depressing--I miss the snow.
kj--I will check out ces' blog when I get a minute. Sorry I bailed on last night's festivities at BY.
Gracias, A!
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